You know people are pulling for you when complete strangers from a different country send their love and support.
That’s the case with Richmond’s Lia and Dagan Weekes, whose six-year-old son, Joshua, is battling a rare and aggressive form of leukemia.
The couple has barely left the side of brave Joshua’s hospital bed since he was rushed into surgery about a month ago, after he suddenly fell ill on a family trip in the Philippines.
The plight of the Grade 1 DeBeck elementary student, who has has been undergoing chemotherapy at BC Children’s Hospital, grabbed media headlines after his mom made an urgent public appeal for a life-saving bone marrow donation from someone sharing Joshua’s rare ethnic background of Filipino, English, Icelandic or Caribbean.
“We are still in hospital waiting for Joshua’s (blood) counts to rise enough to be well enough to return home for a few days,” Lia told the Richmond News via email this week.
“We have had so many (people messaging) us after sending out the story of our little one.
“Complete strangers, locally and out of province and even out of country, have reached out to us, sending positive thoughts and offering to help in any way they can. It has been amazing the people that care about our story.”
The support for the Weekes family continued this week when friends and colleagues of Lia, who has worked at Richmond Hospital for the past 11 years as a social worker, revealed they’re hosting a bone marrow drive for Joshua.
On April 5, at the St. Joseph the Worker Parish Church on 4451 Williams Rd., the family’s friends will help run the Canadian Blood Services’ drive from 1:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. to uncover a matching donor for Joshua.
“One of Lia’s friends and colleagues, Kathryn Barczi, said they chose the church in question because it’s in an area with a high Filipino population, which is Joshua’s main ethnicity. Anyone considering donating has to be aged between 17 and 35 with at least one of Joshua’s four ethnicities – Filipino, British, Icelandic or Caribbean.
All it will take at the drive is 20 minutes of your time, with a simple cheek swab. Donors will be walked through five stations and the whole process will be explained to them in-depth. If you can’t make the bone marrow drive in person, you can also register online through OneMatch (blood.ca/en/stem-cell/register-onematch), and the cheek swab package will be mailed to you.
“The more registrants we have, the higher the likelihood that we can bring Joshua back to health,” Barczi added.
Out of the blue, with little prior warning, Joshua was diagnosed last month with acute myeloid leukemia.
